Y’know, Amber is right; praising her for gutting someone is odd. I mean, the guy was an evil creep and that’s beyond doubt. He raped or attempted to rape and psychologically traumatize what appears to be multiple women. If we were all removed from society and set up as a judge most of us would condemn him if not to death then severe punishment.

But, Amber enjoyed it and that’s dangerous. She’s dealing with sadistic urges and a desire to resort to violence. She’s so disturbed by this and how it relates to her father that she’s compartmentalizing herself. She indulges in violence but she only does it as her alter-ego, a ‘superhero.’ In this sense, maybe Willis is using the societal stereotype that ‘heroes’ are allowed to be violent and they’re justified to hide the struggle with Amber. Sal noticed that she doesn’t seem to value her own safety but I don’t think Sal realizes that part of this is to preserve a sense of her self. I think that she may have had to become a hero so she could deal with her violence.

Of course, this is all my opinion. With all that aside, it’s probably one of the deepest psychological profiles I’ve seen in a comic character. I love it.

I got reminded of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s “Der Verdacht”, a weak reprise of his Kommissär Bärlach from “Der Richter und sein Henker”. Bärlach suspects that a doctor doing vivisection on KZ inhabitants has not committed suicide but changed identity after the war.

A friend of his tells him a story from his youth as MD student (I think) where one of them fell from a ladder injuring his larynx such that without a rather immediate tracheal incision he would have suffocated, and said suspect is the only one with the guts to perform that operation with a knife.

Due to the swift and decisive operation, their costudent survives but never speaks a word again with the person rescuing him because he notices that his rescuer immensively enjoyed it. However, he only confides this to his friend since it did save his life.

Amber’s not yet gone but she is afraid, and so far nobody’s being helpful.

Everyone is glad to have somebody around who will do what nobody else dares to do, never mind the motivation.

Uh, liking Dürrenmatt and not knowing “Der Richter und sein Henker” (The Judge and His Hangman) is a curious combination. It’s a cornerpiece of his creative output (and has seen a whole bunch of movie adaptations). “Der Verdacht”, not so much. Even though the Amber motive reminded me of the latter.

I think this might work out, in the end, though.
Maybe if Amber gives in and tries to go full-villain, she will notice that she is ultimately different from her father, because she fails to be a villain.

Also: no matter what, anything they say about her actions is evidence that Amber is violent and terrible.

If they are upset that she was violent, they’re right, being violent is terrible and she’s terrible. If they don’t react, it’s because they knew all along that she’s terrible so they weren’t surprised. If they admire her bravery or selflessness, they have terrible values like her dad, and by aligning with those values, Amber is terrible.

All brains do that — humans are really, really good at making new evidence fit the worldview instead of the other way around. Our atypical brains aren’t broken in that regard (at least, no moreso than a typical brain would be). It’s the narrative that’s broken.

Blaine would have likely found something to disparage, because that’s what he is. Amber probably knows this deep down but refuses to allow herself to acknowledge it, even though that’s what she needs to come back from this “ledge”. Because the fact she is most definitely not her father also means there is no way her father will ever genuinely praise her…

Just to be clear, Ryan died from the stabbing (or slashing, or a combination of the two), yes? Because while Willis said there wouldn’t be death in this comic, everything so far points at a death, here. Like the way Dorothy says “and any potential future lives he may have attempted.”

I have a hard time believing Blaine would praise Amber for this, because I don’t think he can praise her: he needs her to be weak and ineffectual so he can dominate her. I think he’d be threatened and intimidated if he realized how strong she is and how savage she can be.
I think he’d berate her for being a violent psycho.

No. Blaine would have criticized her for not killing him. Not because Blaine would have killed him (though maybe), but because “It’s never good enough” is true for people like him. Finding fault in success is how an abuser like him keeps power, and keeps someone down.

The original Scooby-Doo cartoons always showed the kids debunking the supernatural phenomenon at the end. My fundamentalist parents had no problem with it. However, there were apparently some later Scooby-Doo cartoons, maybe contemporaneous with Joyce’s childhood?, which apparently had real supernatural villains. I was in my late teens or early twenties when some speaker at our church talked about that and how bad it was. I never saw those later Scooby-Doo cartoons except in an excerpt shown by said speaker, so I may have been lied to with video clips taken out of context.

I dunno. My cousin and a few of my friends grew up pretty fundie (very akin to Joyce, or in some cases moreso [for instance, in quiverful or cult-like churches]). It would be easier to list the approved secular books than all of the banned ones, but Nancy Drew was fundie-approved.

Other approved secular books were American Girl, Dear America, and Cam Jansen (another girl detective, who has a photographic memory), as well as chaste romances (often Amish in setting). I’d categorize the chaste romances as secular because they weren’t published by Zondervan or marketed as Christian Fiction, although usually the characters were chaste for religious reasons.

The big no-nos were fantasy (in some cases, this included even Narnia, Wrinkle In Time, and Lord of the Rings), science fiction, non-chaste romance (or even YA novels with a romantic sub-plot), anything with gangsters / spies / con-artists…er, so, pretty much all books.

I’m a little surprised that Joyce was allowed to read Twilight, honestly. I mean, sure, technically it’s a chaste romance (sex is culminated off-screen after marriage, after three books full of unresolved sexual tension). But many of the characters have magical powers and abilities that don’t explicitly come from God, which could theoretically make them demons.

I mean… that’s accurate, at least for me. when you nurse a particular kind of self-loathing, a kind where you believe you’re evil and will taint everyone around with that evil, being showered with praise is frustrating. after a certain amount of praise, you give up trying to explain that what they’re praising was actually bad. you bottle it up.

so when someone actually has an issue with you, it does two things: it feeds into your belief that you are evil, and it provides you with an opportunity to release the self-hatred you’ve had to keep hidden.

That’s fair, for both of them. Dorothy miscalculated a little bit (which, given how scary the last strip was, is understandable). She thought it would make Amber feel better to bring up the “greater good” context of this, but all Amber’s thinking is that the man who she hates most in the world would praise the out-of-control violence she displayed. I get it. (For the first time though, I’m not sure I agree with Dorothy. Sure she did the greater good, but if Amber’s mental health concerns are an issue to HER, then its not just “details.”)

Any reason given to kill or sterilize any given group of people (especially based on intrinsic properties) is just trying to whitewash (sic!) a large scale crime. Doesn’t have anything to do with ‘greater good’.

Greater good in single point of reference logic uses ‘greater good’ where ‘good for me/us’ would be more truthful.

Both usages shouldn’t be used to throw the concept out as a whole. Though I would always take a good hard look at who profits and who pays when coming across it.

Dorothy still doesn’t realize how badly Amber needs help. We as readers know so much more of Amber’s state of mind than she does.

While you can say asians have on average higher IQs (than non-asians, I presume), I don’t think there’s any logic that genuinely leads to exterminating the rest of the human race as being the greater good. To start with, even assuming IQ tests are a perfect measure of comparative intelligence (which it isn’t), intelligence is simply not the only desirable trait in our species. Physical strength, resistance to disease, creativity, sociability, and keen senses are just a couple off the top of my head that have at least some link to genetics. If anything, we should simply encourage asians and other races with other higher-than-average positive genetic traits to have children with each other.

So the true logical greater good there is approving of mixed-race couples.

The more variation there is the higher the risk of mutation, the greater the risk of mutation the more likely you are to get genetic defects.
The inverse is also true, to little variation and you also get more mutation…blah blah. (But short of a world wide eugenics program we can never get the “perfect” amount of variation. (Not to mention the level of eugenics needed would make it evil))

I would love to see a group of people arguing for the extermination of same-race couples, not because it’s something I want, just because it would be really funny. (Like the “Save the planet, kill your self” people)

You’re ignore that with any form of utilitarianism, how you define the “good” that your maximizing is critical. Is it happiness? The absence of pain? Life? Some combination of things? How is each factor quantified and weighted?

There’s also the more practical problem that to implement such a program, some organization or government would have implement it, and “granting an group of fallible, corruptible humans the authority to decide who lives and who dies” is itself a rather extreme evil that would not likely be outweighed by the good of increasing the average IQ, or any other single attribute.

It would require some kind of incredibly drastic situation like a global plague threatening to wipe out all human life in order to justify taking such a risk.

And yet, never doing anything bad in the name of a greater good also fails when taken to its logical end – lying is bad, so therefore you shouldn’t lie to the Gestapo even for the greater good of keeping the Jews hidden from them.

Perhaps the actual lesson is that taking things to their logical extremes is generally a bad idea. (Though of course, by a similar argument, it shouldn’t be completely ruled out.)

Eh, I dunno. Greater good could be used to justify selflessness on a small scale as well. For example:

“I’m home first and nobody has done the dishes yet. I don’t like doing the dishes, it makes me tired, and it’s not my ‘job’ to do the dishes.

But, if I don’t do the dishes, [housemate] will feel more stressed than if she comes home to a clean kitchen; messes really stress her out. And if nobody does the dishes by the time dinner is done, we won’t have any clean dishes left. This will either lead to a big argument in which someone finally does the dishes, or nobody will do the dishes, and the food bits will start to mold and become a health hazard.

On the other hand, if I *do* do the dishes, all that stress and conflict will be averted, illness due to mold will be avoided, and we’ll have a reasonably pleasant night.

Nobody is going to notice that I’ve done the dishes, so there is no reward for me doing them, and it will lead to slightly more tiredness and annoyed-ness on my part. But, I’m going to do them anyway, for the greater good of the household.”

So, basically, “greater good” can rationalize actually good actions that are nevertheless stressful or frustrating to take on, or it can rationalize bad actions.

In the case of the comic, it’s a bit of a red herring, but I would probably feel a bit like Dorothy here anyway. If someone saved my life, even if it involved harming someone else who was attacking me, I’d still feel overwhelmed with gratitude. I’d try to come up with reasons that were more logical (“well, he might’ve gone on to hurt others! He hurt people other than me!”) but the physical, gut-feeling of relief at not dying would overrule any other emotion I had.

I once had a near-death experience in a hospital (I began asphyxiating in reaction to a drug I’d never had before and turned out to be allergic to), and while the nurse who saved my life didn’t have to do anything unethical to do so, being able to breathe again gave me a feeling that I think people describe as a religious experience. I literally wanted to fall down and worship Nurse Stacy.

It’s funny to think about now, but for days afterward I kept trying to figure out her surname so I could look her up and…I dunno, write her a letter? Fortunately, I never did figure it out, and the feeling wore off. I don’t know if being saved provokes that reaction in everyone, but it’s intense, and I was really motivated to rationalize it.

So, Dark Shower thought of Horror, unrelated to current comic strip.
So there I was, in the shower, mind wandering thorugh all the accumulated knowledge of the past few days and I went back to one particular pair of strips.
August 15 and August 16, 1017, two weeks ago.
I think that Joyce may have, inadvertedly, hurt Joe.
I’m not talking about something as shallow as a blow to his toxic macho persona or his view of the world as an Alpha Male or some such shit.

August 15: Joe drops a big bomb in a minor way, during a bigger rant, he mentions that he believes he doesn’t matter and nobody actually cares about him. The way it is worded seems like a minor thing, and most readers don’t notice, taking in account the ammount of comments yelling at Joyce to Punch him.
Joyce, throuhg no fault of her own, as she appears to be flashbacking to earlier strips (Rubbing her Punching wrist, thinking of Ryan the Rapist or Toedad, or possibly the way her whole worldview has been altered by her stay at college), doesn’t seem to notice THAT part of Joe’s rant, and is more concentrated on the issue of not seeing a problem in objectifying girls. Again, not a bad thing to focus on on most cases and definitively not a bad thing to focus with her previous misadventures. The big issue here is: Joe inadvertedly opened up in a big way, he let slip that he doesn’t think anybody actually cares about him.
And Joyce didn’t notice.

Joe might not have reallized this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if his subconcious did.

kid we are reading diiiiifferent comments sections. I read ‘oh no Joe’ so many times. And Joyce explicitly said ‘everything you do matters’, and also compounds on her previously obvious feeling of trust in Joe by telling him about her near-rape. The ‘previously obvious’ part is where He’s the one she talks to when she’s visiting her family.
Joyce means surprisingly a lot to Joe, and I don’t think she’s insensible of that, or fails to respond in kind.

i mean yes joe has some deep insecurities and all sorts of pain and it’s not trivial and does really matter. he could really use some friends to help him figure his shit out. but whether or not it was intentional, that’s such a manipulative move to slip that in right when someone’s trying to call you out on some seriously harmful shit he does. It either encourages joyce to ignore the issue, or if she doesn’t notice / ignores it at the time, to feel like shit later, for standing up for herself. if she goes back to apologize for anything about that interaction i’m gonna gag.

I don’t think he was just slipping it in (bad Joe, stop that) (sorry, he can’t help himself) there in a bid for sympathy or anything. I think that is legitimately what he believed/s — that as long as no one cares about him or what he thought, no one can be hurt by his actions, therefore it’s for the best if no one cares about him. Joe despises vulnerability, playing for pity would be very out of character for him. This was just honesty, albeit perhaps coloured by a shade of self-deception.

I… likewise don’t think he was slipping it in there to be manipulative.

Heck, I know manipulative statements aren’t always said on purpose; sometimes they’re delivered accidentally and unknowingly — and should be addressed situationally.

But… I don’t think the fact that he said it is the problem. I think the fact that he seems to believe what he said is the problem. We got one issue with Joe addressed (casual misogyny, how that hurts others), but I’m hoping we see the other one (the lack of self-worth) addressed as well.

I’m so glad Amber is talking to someone about all of this. But she really needs to see a professional as well. Dorothy is trying really hard, but she doesn’t fully understand where Amber’s coming from on this, so her attempts are making Amber feel worse…

Amber really needs to work through the trauma of her abusive childhood and her anger issues.

Amber holds herself back pretty well but no one including herself should expect her to live here entire life keeping herself always bottled up. It’s just not how humans are designed to work.

Yeah she shouldn’t use her anger as a first nature like her father. But she’s not her father there’s more to her than that. But if this is still how she feels than maybe it’s time to find a better way channeling and working through her anger because constantly beating herself down over it and isolating herself isn’t working.

Also, Willis, my comments over on It’s Walky have been in moderation for days. I’m the same person over there as I am here, and the only reason for the name change both here and there was that the grav roulette glitch screwed up my ability to comment on both comics.

I’m having trouble even understanding how one panel leads to another here, and I’m not sure how much is that this stuff really can be confusing in RL, and how much is that the part of my brain that does most of the social-understanding things is still on vacation.

I said this yesterday – Amber’s self loathing has set up a system where she cannot accept validation from others no matter how it comes. If the others on the floor ‘notice’ her it means they’re paying attention to the monster in her. If they don’t, it means they’ve always known she was a monster so don’t feel the need to react. It’s a pretty vicious no-win cycle and as such there it doesn’t leave any ‘right’ thing that any well-meaning person can say to get through to her.

WOULD Blaine praise her for this, though? She seems so sure he would, her Inner Blaine Voice has a whole speech and everything. But like, Blaine is an abusive piece of shit. His Approval Fills Her With Shame, but she’s assuming that there’s some way she could behave that he’d approve of.

If he’d seen her being aggressive and violent (and known it was her, rather than just being pummeled by someone in a mask) would he really be like, “FINALLY a daughter I can be proud of” or would he be like “crazy bongo who needs someone to control her.” I know which of the two -I- consider more likely.

Blaine would insult her and abuse her either way. Because he is an abuser and they DO that. The excuses would adapt as needed.

Amber takes everything said about her and turns it negative.
Sarah spends most of her time telling people they are wrong.
Amber having a conversation with Sarah would either be horrific, or might bizarrely actually point Amber more in the right direction.

Fine, we’ll roll seven sets of 4d6, dropping the lowest number from each roll. Then, we’ll tally up the results of each set and assign those to each letter in the word “monster”. Odd-numbered letters will represent a positive-monster value, or “Yes”, and even-numbered letters will represent a negative-monster value, or “No”. If, at the end of it, there are more “Yes” letters than “No” letters, we conclude that Amber is a monster; If there are more “No” letters than “Yes” letters, Amber is not a monster.

Are there enough hoops to jump through for a potential non-monster outcome, yet? Because I can add more.

Completely unrelated to today’s strip, but what led you guys to start reading Dumbing of Age? I mean, for me, I found it by clicking on a link in tfwiki that led to shortpacked!, marathoned that and then thought it’d be nice to see what other comics Willis wrote. Just curious about how you guys discovered this comic.

An old friend of mine vented to me about the Malaya/Leslie romance subplot in Shortpacked. It was really weird because I never even heard of the comic before and he just started complaining to me but I was like ‘okay’. Then he linked me the comic site and I read through the majority of the comic because I wanted context. Kept with that til it ended, made the jump to Dumbing of Age eventually…I can’t remember when but I’d been reading this for a while before eventually commenting!

Yeah, I really disliked that plot as well. I always had the idea it was torpedoed because Willis wanted to have Robin/Leslie endgame without shipping wars. I also, God help me, thought they made a cute couple.

It’s been on my rather for awhile thanks to some guest comics in Questionable Content, and one day I started binging it. It was a slow read for the first fifty strips or so until I got to know the characters, then I made screaming at fictive people for not sorting out their fictive shit a part of my daily routine.

I picked up Shortpacked! a couple of years before DoA started, honestly can’t remember how I landed on that the first time. Took a little while to think of DoA as the main strip rather than a side project, but this has been on my daily never-miss-an-update list since very early on. It’s hands-down the best-written webcomic I know of. Also @Bagge: Yup 🙂

I’ve been reading this exact comic for 5 years now. A saw a classmate reading it in class and asked what it was about and he said he liked reading it because it is about a naive religious home-schooled girl learning about the real world outside of her small bubble. Considering I was raised in a very strict household and lived a sheltered life, it really spoke to me and my experiences when I finally left home and met a gay guy for the first time and people with other religions and lifestyles.

I think bongomedia started me on webcomics. It might have been Girls with Slingshots they talked about and from there, I went on via Danielle’s Comics I like link, stumbled onto some other hiveworks stuff. When comics ended or I lost interest, I started to explore what else might be interesting.
And ended up here. I even bought the first four books even though shipping to Germany really makes that expensive.
Hooked up another friend that way, but for most the combination of “it’s an comic” and “it’s not in German” is a insurmountable obstacle.

Over the years I’ve tried reading every walkyverse comic several times, but only DoA managed to hold my interest. Don’t remember when did that happen, I think around the start. It’s been an overall enjoyable ride with Dina, even if the comment section annoys me sometimes with its religiosity.

Yikes, its been over a decade since I started reading Shortpacked (I think), so I have no idea what brought me to it initially. I’m not a big webcomic reader, but I found it reasonably entertaining, up until the plot about Leslie’s wedding, which really hit the feels in a good way (despite not being able to even THINK about the wedding strip without crying).
I started reading Dumbing of Age when it started, but it didn’t really grab me and I dropped it pretty quickly. Just recently I was looking for some time-killers, re-read Shortpacked, and decided to go check out DoA, and wound up really hooked into it.

I followed an LGBT+ webcomic called Rain (if you’ve never heard of it, I highly recommend checking it out), and one of the status updates the author made had a link to an article listing their favorite LGBT+ webcomics. This was #1 on the list, So I checked it out, and I am SO glad I did. This is by far the best webcomic that I’ve ever read so far 😀

I found it after looking for a new comic to read and noticing the link too QC from xkcd. I’ve NEVER been interested in that sort of comic before. Just gag-a-day strips, and action. None of this stuff where there’s personal drama and feelings and you need to get invested in the characters. For reasons I don’t remember, I checked it out anyway and ended up blowing through Jeph’s entire archive and becoming addicted to feels.

Craving more, I started checking out some of the strips by guest artists that I’d bookmarked, leading me here. I clicked “random” a couple times to see if it was something I might be interested in, and landed somewhere in book five. Almost immediately, I fell in love with Joyce and Becky, so I started again from the beginning, before reading Shortpacked and Willis’ other comics

Now I find myself in the position where some random dude with a web comic has the power to utterly destroy me emotionally with a few strokes of his stylus, and who might choose to do so at any moment.

You mention QC. I was reading QC and ignore the rotating characters ad for DofA for a oolong time.

Foe me it started with OJST. And DAR also by Erika Moen. But (there’s a pattern) I ignored her promoting Girls With Slingshots for the longest time, until I read a review and dove in. That was my first pure-narrative webcomic.

From there, Something Positive and QC from crossover and guest strips. Into the whole Walkyverse, too, and from there to Fans!, and more.

I *believe* I started reading it because I was reading O Human Star, and someone mentioned in a comment that Sulla Pinsky was their favorite transwoman character in all of comics. Someone else said she was tied with DoA Carla, and the arc in which Carla 1-upped Mary with her thing with the ping-pong balls had just finished and was linked to. So I read that, then went back to the beginning and binge-read most of it in a few days.

I clicked on a banner on another webcomic I follow (I forget which one). It had the rotating headshots of the main cast and I thought Joyce and Sal and the title pun were intriguing enough to warrant a click. I read the most recent week of comics, then checked the archive to see if it was a manageable size (it was, but this was 2013!). I caught up with it once a week or so for a few weeks, then decided it was worth the archive binge and addition to the daily rotation.

I’d never read any of the other Walkyverse comics, although I had heard of Shortpacked, and maybe been linked to one or two particular strips. From what I’ve heard (including from David Willis himself), that may be a good thing as I don’t have preconceived notions of the characters, which may be written differently this time around.

The artwork is a huge upgrade over his earlier comics, and has even noticeably improved during the run of DoA, but the real strength is the writing. As a fellow recovering fundamentalist with a sheltered upbringing, I identify with Joyce a lot, and am pleased to see how fairly she’s been treated. She’s called out when she does or says something that’s not OK, but isn’t made out to be a terrible person just because she’s a Christian. I was afraid the plot was heading toward having her snap and completely renounce religion, and go from cheerful and sunny to bitter and cynical, but instead she’s been revealed to be made of stronger stuff and is experiencing real growth (and at a reasonable pace). Bravo!

I’ve also learned a lot from reading the comments. It’s a nice throwback to a simpler time on the internet, when there was actual discussion in the comment section, rather than terribleness. There’s also a lot of smart people here with unique experiences and perspectives I just wouldn’t encounter IRL.

Well yeah, but she doesn’t need a justification for her actions. She shouldn’t have to do such stuff, the police exists exactly so that they are the only ones to do violence in the country. Any justification of violence is always completely pointless.
What she actually needs is a reminder that her actions are a proof that she’s Ethan’s Friend, not Blaine’s Daughter. Like, leave her to think that her actions were not justified, but do convince her that this is exactly what any true friend would do anyway, regardless if it’s justified or not.

People not phrasing you for stopping a guy with a knife who intended to kill you and your friends seems much more weird to me.

No one says to her face they think it is great she put a knife in someone. No one with a shred of emphatie would. They are saying it’s great she stopped him and know they are in no position to criticize or phraise her method. They haven’t been in her position.

If she had superpowers (or even a stun gun about her person) she might have had other options, but really, anyone who thinks she would have been able to stop him without using his knife on him should think again. Look at what he’s doing when he finds them. He is crazy enough to intend to go into the dorm to look for Joyce.

Is this all part of the old “if your are really good, your are helpless against violence” trope?
Because acting against it requires violence sometimes, even Marshall Rosenberg would have taken that knife first and started trying to talk later.
You need to be alive to talk.

Praising, not phrasing…
On second thought, it really is the distinction of result and method that it missing in Ambers approach. When people praise her for stopping him, she hears “good you stuck a knife in him” and that’s distinctly what she expects her abusive father to say. And she for herself knows, she actually liked doing it while she was doing it. And that’s too close to the enjoyment Blaine gets from abusing others for her to not think she is like him.
I don’t think she would enjoy hurting someone who a) is helpless and b) has never done any physical harm to her or people she loves. And that’s what makes her different from him.

Of course, part of it might be that she was perfectly capable of handling that situation without stabbing him. She stabbed him because she lost control, not because she needed to to protect herself or Dorothy.
That wouldn’t be true for the vast majority of people, even trained people in the real world, but Amber’s a superhero. She doesn’t have powers, but that’s still what she is in the narrative.
She took that knife from him like he was a child with a toy.

There is a problem here and it’s not just that she liked doing what she was forced to do.

You punch him. The only reason Ryan stood a chance against Amazi-Girl was because he called onto his buddies. Without them and without the knife Amber would have been able to beat ever-loving shit out of him and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

She had Sal’s help last time, and he STILL put up a fight, and got away. Sure, she probably could’ve won the fight. Probably.

But HE is the one that escalated to deadly force. That changes the math dramatically. Losing the fight no longer means ending up bruised and hurt, but hospitalized or dead, and nobody left between him and Dorothy, and later Joyce.

Even if she’s got a 70% chance of success, that other 30% leaves up to three people dead or seriously injured.

Using the knife, however, was almost certain to take the fight out of him immediately, and remove him as a threat with minimal risk of him getting the chance to get the knife back or hurt anyone.

The math is not that difficult. He should have run away when Amber disarmed him, because his ensuring his safety was RYAN’S responsibility, NOT Amber’s.

Here you gohttp://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/intern/
She took his buddies apart and until his buddy got a drop on her he looked scared shitless. Ryan is not a threat to Amber. She took the knife away from him as easily as you take a candy from a baby. He tried to lay hands on her while she was Distracted tinkering with the phone and still couldn’t touch her.

The moment both were thrown out he would have panicked and run away. Or just panicked and get beaten up by Amber. Ryan is not a fighter, he is a little bully who goes after people only when he has an Advantage, like drugging them, or having his buddies beside him, or having a weapon. Take that advantage from him and he is a powerless little prick.

Except he didn’t run. He had already decided his life was going to be ruined and didn’t care about the consequences, as demonstrated by him showing up with the intent of attacking Joyce with a knife. Even if he was dumb as hell to think he couldn’t still wriggle out of any substantial consequences, he clearly believed he had nothing to lose, and a desperate animal is a much more dangerous one.

The whole thing was caught on tape, which the police would’ve seen. If he’d attempted to flee and Amber had stopped him, they would’ve seen it, and she would not simply be walking around freely.

The odds are that the fight ended with what we saw, that slashing him up with the knife took the fight out of him and it was over.

@Fart Captor
I see it differently. See that moment when Amber took the knife from him? He looked stunned, terrified. I think he was just too shocked to react as Amber started “fighting back”. From what little we saw we’ve seen Nothing indicating that Ryan fought back. All we’ve seen was Amber hitting him, first with fist, then with knife.

This time he had a knife. but then she took it away from him. At that point, to her, he was no longer a threat. If she’d been fighting under control – or if she was Amazi-Girl at the time, she could have taken him down without hurting him too badly. At least without using the knife.
Since she was Amber, all the restraints were off and she cut him up.

She basically says this in the fight: “Unfortunately for you … I’m not Amazi-Girl”

Yeah, the bros all went down easy, and were only a threat because there were three of them. Ryan was bigger and taller, and might not have needed help getting away if Sal hadn’t been there.

Winning the fight when he clearly stopped caring about consequences was possibly, but not so much of a guarantee that Amber should have taken the risk just for the sake of being less violent. He could’ve had another weapon, or simply used his weight advantage and slammed her head against one of many hard surfaces nearby. One injury could have been enough to cost her the fight.

And for fucks sake, she had just had a known rapist – who had previously gotten the better of her, even if it was with help – threaten her and her friends with a knife. Of course she was fucking scared and angry. Do you really think Amazi-Girl would’ve been some mystical bastian of calm there? Even if she had a 70% chance of winning, that other 30% results in up to three people being hospitalized or dead.

Me? I get cut up taking the knife away from him, if I’m incredibly lucky and then stab and slash at him in a panic until I realize he’s not trying to attack any longer. Hopefully we don’t both bleed out.

Amber? Amber takes the knife from him one-handed, tosses it aside, throws a couple punches and takes him down. Or would if she didn’t let the rage monster out.
I can’t explain it without using comic book logic because Amber’s a superhero. You can’t explain what she’s capable of without comic book logic, because those are the rules she plays by.

It’s like asking how Bruce Wayne would deal with a knife wielding attacker without using comic book logic. The question doesn’t make sense.

Batman doesn’t get pulled off of ledges by his cape, or end up getting sucker punched by someone like Malaya, or nearly die because he blew the tires of a car he was on top of while nobody was even holding the wheel.

She’s good at fighting, but she’s still just a kid who makes mistakes. And a mistake while fighting Ryan could’ve cost her her life.

Nah, she’s not Batman, but she’s not just some kid either. She does get comic book logic, if not quite to the same level. She fought a guy with a gun on top of an out of control car, that she’d leaped onto after being thrown into the car behind. Yeah, she nearly died, but without comic book or at least action movie logic, you don’t even get that first step.

I think the clear reading of the scene is that she lost control fighting Ryan, just like she did fighting Blaine. The point isn’t so much whether she could or could not have beaten him easily – though I think the ease with which she took the knife from him speaks to that, but that she went into that fight to hurt him. Again “Unfortunately for you … I’m not Amazi-Girl.” Amazi-Girl wouldn’t have been trying to hurt him. Amazi-Girl wouldn’t have had to. That look on Amber’s face when she says that isn’t a scared look.

I think the scene and it’s emotional impact work better if Amber isn’t a scared kid defending herself as best she can and unfortunately having to eviscerate Ryan in the process. That’s not her arc. The point here is that she did give in to her violent, rage filled side, not that she had to.

Interesting point in the other post about Amazi-Girl being some mystical bastion of calm. Of course she would have been – Amazi-Girl is always the one in control. Amber’s the one who get scared or angry or dangerous. If AG can’t keep control, then it’s not her, it’s Amber again. I wonder if that’s why AG didn’t take over – because she wouldn’t have kept control of herself and couldn’t show that weakness.

Amazi-Girl gets some of the comic logic. We never saw Amber getting any.

It’s much more difficult to stop someone without hurting them then just to stop them.

And once he escalated to deadly force, failing to stop him had too many other lives involved. Yes, Amazi-Girl might have pulled a trick to stop him without hurting him. Amber couldn’t and wouldn’t.

But it wasn’t her choice to start the fight. It wasn’t her choice he didn’t run when she took the knife. Those were his choices. He choose violence and stupidity and as a result, he’s hurt.

When you take a deadly weapon and threaten to kill someone, it’s not their responsibility to take care of your health.

Someone without her backstory, without those many years of hate and anger and training, would have lost.
There are only two other characters in the cast who had a chance of stopping him: Sal and Ruth, though I’m not sure about the latter.

In a fight, Amber’s the dangerous one. It’s possible that Amber can’t fight without losing control and going for the throat.

We did see her smile and casually take the knife away from him, though. There is no evidence that she was ever at risk in that fight – other than the existence of the knife, which she had control of from the first move. From what we saw, she completely dominated it, taking him down without a scratch.

Yes, I’d rather she wins too. Yes, someone else would have been in trouble there. No, it wasn’t her choice. No, she didn’t have a responsibility to take care of him.

On the other hand, by slicing him into ribbons, she’s hurt herself. She’d be in much better shape if she had handled him without all the stabbing.

And in terms of Amber’s story arc, I think it works better if she isn’t actually the innocent who really did just defend herself. Amber’s problem with rage and violence actually is real. She didn’t need to do what she did, except that she couldn’t help herself. That’s what she really needs to deal with and it’s what pushing all the good stuff onto Amazi-Girl is denying her.

…. he’s been in ONE STRIP. All we know about him is that he was cheating on his girlfriend to get some gay loving from Mike and wanted to keep it on the down low. And I’m not even sure about the girlfriend part, that might have just been Ethan painting a paranoid interpretation of Mike’s intentions.

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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the tragedy of Amber O’Malley: She simply cannot believe that she could do the right thing. When someone tells that that she has, it sounds negative and that they are enabling the worst parts of her.

I think it’s also that this is the sort of behaviour Blaine has always encouraged in her. That might makes right and that asserting your dominance over others through violence and control is the best solution when dealing with people who stand against you. If she hadn’t already beaten him up, this event would probably give him some sort of pride, not in her, but himself for raising a child who knows how to get shit done. Something he could pat himself on the back for.

Add a dose of self-loathing and the fact that using violence, to maim another human being, however difficult it is to consider Ryan human, solved the situation, and I imagine Amber is afraid that she is proving her father right. That his abusive methods work. Blaine certainly wouldn’t give her approval, but a part of his constant abuse has been berating her for being too passive. Taking an active role to assert dominance is his way. He praises himself for fixing problems with violence and from Amber’s self loathing perspective, if she allows herself to praise her own actions, she becomes him.

And she tried. Oh yes, she tried so very hard. She wanted to make sure that the words that came out were indeed carefully chosen words. She wanted to make sure that what she said could make Amber feel better. She wanted to make sure that Amber understood that what she did was a good thing.

In this strip, Dorothy is kind, understanding, and someone with the best intentions in the world.

And she also chose the exact wrong words.

Of course she did.

Because let’s face it, there were only a very few things to say that could possibly be right, and a million wrong things to say.

And to say the right things to Amber at this point… You have to understand her. I mean, truly, truly -understand- her.

You have to have the “omniscient” knowledge that comes from, say, being an avid reader of the strip; combined with having at least some of the actual experiences that Amber’s had, such as having Ruth’s experience with an abusive guardian; or experience with having DID, or at the very least general experience with being neuroatypical. Or Dina’s experience with attacking someone to protect someone else.

Dorothy has none of those things. None of them. So to choose the exact right words at this point would be like winning the Mega Million jackpot. Twice.

Speaking of, this strip illustrates so very much why I am still annoyed with Joyce’s interruption of Dina’s conversation with Amber. Because Dina’s last words were “attacking someone to protect someone else”.

If left uninterrupted, Amber could have opened up to Dina and tell her what she just told Dorothy. But Dina would be the most likely person to then ask Amber: “Your father, did he use his powers to protect those who could not protect themselves?”

And that would be the best question to ask Amber.

Because Amber knows that no, Blaine did not do that. Blaine used his powers to -attack- those who could not protect themselves, calling them weak and useless. Blaine used his powers to put himself on top.

And for all her problems, Amber always wanted to use her power for someone else. However Amazi-Girl came to be, she was the result of this want.

Now, there might still be hope that Dorothy will ask this question in one form or another. But she’s still struggling so much to understand what the hell is going on. She’s not comprehending this the same way Dina was. She has nowhere near the knowledge she needs, and she does not have the time or resources that we readers have to find that knowledge, before deciding on what to say next.

So odds are, she will once again say the best thing, the kindest thing, the thing that would reach most people.

And it will still be the dead wrong thing to say to Amber in particular.

Love your analysis. A question, though – why would Dina be more likely to say the right thing? Because she met Blaine once (Dorothy also probably knows that Blaine ain’t great, since he was kicked out on parent weekend and AG beat him up for a reason)

Because Dina has an ability to cut to the heart of the matter and see things in the clearest logical terms. Dorothy is also a rational person but as we see here she’s using words like ‘selfless’ and ‘brave’ which are subjective qualifiers that Amber is very good at dismissing. What Amber needs is someone to show her why her identification with her father is rationally, incontrovertibly wrong without sounding like they’re consoling her or trying to make her feel better with what she can brush aside as lies.

Partially what Badgermole said, but more importantly: At this point, Dina knows Amber better than just about anyone, including Danny and Ethan. Dorothy might have some clues, but Dina has a fuller story to draw from.

Also, Dina knows what it’s like to attack someone for the sake of someone you want to protect; and it’s always easier to listen to someone with similar experiences. True, Joyce knows this as well, but Joyce definitely wears her emotions on the sleeve, and there are times when she’s really not good at listening.

In contrast, Dina -listens- to Amber in a way the others don’t. Amber knows how Dina prefers to be talked to, and Dina in turn listens carefully to Amber. When Amber says “don’t comfort me”, everyone else tends to still try it. Dina just says “OK.”

And in turn, Amber knows that Dina does not say anything she does not mean. Amber knows that Dina will not offer empty platitudes just for the sake of trying to comfort her. When Dina speaks, Amber knows that Dina is being one hundred percent fully honest with her.

An unfortunate tendency Amber seems to have is things are either Good or Bad. Either you did a Good thing and Only For Good and No Other Reason, or you did a Bad thing. So even though what she did to Ryan was a good thing and saved many people’s lives, because she enjoyed it and thus it reminds her of what her father would’ve done or would’ve been something he’d’ve praised her for, it means it was a Bad Thing.

It’d be nice if she can learn through people’s reactions to this that even if she has these tendencies, even if she’s “like her father” in certain ways, she CAN still be a good person and do good things. Not everything in the world has to be capital-g Good or capital-b Bad, Amber. Sometimes you can channel things into constructive ways and just… be a person.

Raise your hand if you’re always starting new projects, putting your heart and soul into them, and then aborting them like halfway through because you’re worried they’ll be met with nothing but hate if you ever publish them.

Raise your other hand if the hate your worried about is related to the current political climate, and your worry comes from not wanting to be eaten alive by people with whom you normally get along quite well.

While the comment field has mostly died down by now, I still have more to say, because I’m chatty like that.

Anyway, my previous comment talked about mostly how Dorothy had very little chance of actually saying the right thing, and mostly the chance of saying the wrong things.

But what exactly made this the wrong thing?

It was the last sentence in particular.

“Everything else is just details.”

Or to put it another way:

The end justifies the means.

And -that- is, I think, what makes it all wrong for Amber to hear; it reminds her of her father. See, I do not doubt for a single second that Blaine was very, very, -very- much a “The end justifies the means” man. Especially if the ends resulted in him coming out on top. The people who say that a lot are usually talking about that kind of ending.

And Amber… Amber wants the means to justify the end. The way proper comic super-heroes used to do back in the days. I’d say she perhaps even wants to emulate classic Optimus Prime, whose moral compass is so extreme*, he doesn’t even accept victory if he sacrificed virtual lives.

And every time she fails to uphold such an ideal… Every time she’s reminded how goddamn good it feels to keep on hurting people long after she’s stopped them from hurting others**, she falls deeper into the cavern of despair where she thinks she’ll become her father.

Of course, there’s no way Dorothy or Joyce or practically anyone could know all of this. Maybe Dina, but even then only maybe. But it just goes to show how important it is to know someone before you say something important to them.

*Note the word “extreme” rather than “strong” here.

**AG’s own flaws aside, this was something she was clearly better at; she was not punching Gashface after he’d been secured. Because she was created/came into life as someone who would/could follow a Code in a way Amber did not trust herself to do.

What Amber is missing is that it’s all about motivation.
Her father uses his temper to benefit HIMSELF. Amber has turned her own temper to the benefit of OTHERS. That IS a praiseworthy thing.
Her father, however, is too much of a doofus, and too much in his OWN head to understand that. He’s praising her for losing her temper, thinking she’s done it to empower herself. He’s WRONG. Once again, she let go of her temper to protect OTHERS.
She feels guilty because she THINKS she’s done what HE thinks she’s done, but she’ll come around. She’s smart enough, and surrounded by people perceptive enough, to know better.